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Virtualizing and Centralizing Network Infrastructure at a Decentralized Federal Statistical Agency

Virtualizing and Centralizing Network Infrastructure at a Decentralized Federal Statistical Agency. Elvera Gleaton (Elvera.Gleaton@nass.usda.gov) Joseph L. Parsons (Joseph.Parsons@nass.usda.gov. Outline of the Presentation. Introduction Motivation Business Considerations

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Virtualizing and Centralizing Network Infrastructure at a Decentralized Federal Statistical Agency

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  1. Virtualizing and CentralizingNetwork Infrastructure at a Decentralized FederalStatistical Agency Elvera Gleaton (Elvera.Gleaton@nass.usda.gov) Joseph L. Parsons (Joseph.Parsons@nass.usda.gov

  2. Outline of the Presentation • Introduction • Motivation • Business Considerations • Technical Solution • Implementation Process • Return on Investment • Lessons Learned, Challenges, Next Steps

  3. Introduction United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) • Mission of NASS is to provide timely, • accurate, and useful statistics on United • States agriculture • NASS conducts hundreds of surveys • every year and prepares reports on • United States agriculture • NASS had a distributed network of • servers across the United States • Conducts the Census of Agriculture every five • years

  4. Motivation • Government Mandates • Security (Centralized versus Decentralized) • Green IT (reduce energy consumption) • Data Center consolidation initiative • Budget Efficiencies • Agency Business Needs • Streamline and Standardize LAN Administration • Provide High Availability (continuity of operations) • Increase Flexibility: Employee access anywhere, anyplace, anytime • Increase integration: All users have same desktop

  5. Business Consideration: We consolidated from 48 locations to 2 locations We consolidated 98 physical servers to 44 virtual servers

  6. Technical Solution:The Design • NASS researched and engaged technical consultation from an industry certified vendor to create virtualized design. • Design consisted of: • Server Software: Citrix XenServer, MS Windows 2008, MS SQL Server, • Desktops: Citrix XenDesktop, Windows XP, Windows 7, MS Terminal licenses • Servers: Dual Blade Chassis with High Availability (Redundancy) • Storage: Replicated SANs in two locations • Telecommunications: 3 level of redundancy • 1 - primary (T1) 2 - backup (DSL) 3 – Disaster Recovery (Hot Spot) • Monitoring Software: Alerts on all systems

  7. NASS Centralized Design Two server farms, clustered and replicated Field Offices Teleworker (Remote User) Mobile Smartphone/iPad Headquarters Replication, Clustered w/ Load Balancing Data Center (Eastern) Data Center (Western)

  8. Technical Solution: Secured Application Delivery

  9. Technical Solution:One Physical PC showing 4 virtual desktops

  10. Implementation Process • Migrated two Field Offices (VA and IA) • Proof Of Concept; monitored for two months watching bandwidth and application performance • Pilot migration with two additional offices • Finalizing migration checklist and tweaking system • Conducted an external verification and validation of system (system review of all components) • Migrated two Field Offices a week (pausing when there was a peak in business workload) • Issues were documented, but there were no changes to the system during migration

  11. Return on Investment • Staffing • Significantly reduced number of staff managing the Local Area networks • Net savings of US $1.8 -1.9 million dollars • Infrastructure (hardware and software) • Reduce life cycle of file and print servers • Net savings of US $750,000 Note: We are now reducing the number of software licenses (software is only deployed to limited desktops which are used when needed)

  12. Lessons Learned, Challenges • Deploy in stages over time • Fix small issues they will increase as more users are added to system • Involve and train operations and maintenance staff early • Operations was slow to accept the new environment • Keep stakeholders up to date • Communicate often on project status to everyone, users were fearful of the unknown • Develop and implement standard operating procedures • Technology continues to evolve and improve, maintain a design, build, test implement model • Develop a robust and always available operation • Centralized system where we have users working late in the evening – maintenance windows are tight.

  13. Next Steps • Continue to improve the system • Deploy AppSense maintain user profiles • Continue to train operations and maintenance staff • Bring in expert contractors for review and oversight of system • Improve fail-over time

  14. Thank You

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